In the late hours of a summer night in 2013, a simmering tension outside a nightclub in Huger, South Carolina, tragically culminated in the death of 20-year-old Herman Manigault III. On August 25, 2013, in the parking lot of a club known as 'A Place in the Woods' on Hamlin Corner Road, a dispute escalated into a fatal shooting. Manigault, a young man from the nearby community of Wando, was found wounded in the parking lot and was rushed to a hospital in Mount Pleasant, where he succumbed to his
injuries approximately an hour later.
The investigation into the shooting quickly led Berkeley County Sheriff's deputies to a suspect. A few days after the incident, 17-year-old Shaquille Mileak Jamal Washington of Huger was arrested and charged with murder in connection with Manigault's death. Witnesses at the scene reported that an altercation had broken out as the club was closing, which then led to the deadly gunfire.
The legal proceedings that followed painted a more complex picture of the events that transpired that night. Washington stood trial for the murder of Herman Manigault III. After hearing the evidence and witness testimonies, the jury ultimately found him guilty of the lesser charge of voluntary manslaughter.
However, the case did not end there. The verdict was appealed, and the South Carolina Supreme Court reviewed the trial proceedings. The higher court identified an error in the instructions that had been given to the jury by the trial judge. Consequently, the Supreme Court overturned the voluntary manslaughter conviction and ordered a new trial on that charge.
